bike culture blogged

This afternoon I wandered over to Denver’s City Park to join in the festivities at the annual New Belgium Brewery Tour de Fat. As expected, it was a freak show assortment of balloon swallowers, jugglers, tall bike riders, and off-the-wall burlesque performances. Less expected, however, was that I would run into an Ellsworth Ride–probably the only one in the state.

As soon as I entered the grounds, the Ride’s unmistakable form jumped out at me, so I walked over to admire it in person and to introduction myself. It turned out the owner was Lee Davis, a member of the Fallbrook Technologies board of directors–they manufactur the Ride’s Nuvinci automatic (CVP) hub. We chatted about the bike, fiddled with our Blackberrys trying to take a picture, and while Lee told me about the Ride’s magnificent ride, we probably had three or four groups stop to ask about the bike. It is impressive to see in person.

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Considering I’m going to watch ads on the Tour de France thousands of times, over the next 3 weeks, the first run is always important to figure out what I don’t mind, totally dig, and despise. Like say, those Flomax ads or, from way back, the extreme mountain biking ad which featured someone running into a tree …

Today, the SRAM Force ads rock and I’m seeing their gruppo show up in the peloton. At the Tour, they’re blogging away.

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As part of their Planet Green initiative, Discovery is racing green at the Tour de France and doing so by planting trees to offset their carbon. As good as that sounds (do they carve their names in the trees for evermore?), I’d hope for something more like a biodiesel caravan or putting the Michelin Man in their Zero-Pollution Car or how ‘bout a domestique bike trailer guy who’d follow them around? Ya know, put a little electric motor on that bike, a silly outfit, and he’s green tech support on a sport-utility bike.

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p>A couple of years ago at ICFF, I met the guys from Flavor Paper. In the middle of a Javits center bursting with enough brilliant design to keep a junky like me enthralled for weeks, Flavor Paper’s booth stood out–as did the slightly disheveled guys with an unmistakable passion for wallpaper.

The New Orleans-based maker of boutique wallpaper had a thrillingly over the top booth swathed in a crazy quilt of their eye-popping patterns. Periodically I check their site to find a wild new pattern for my notional dream house and so stumbled across the following titled “Flower Pedal.”

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<a/>I’ve seen a couple of these shirts around lately and I love the message. There have been a couple articles that try to quantify the actual mileage of a cyclist - most put it around 800-1000 miles per gallon equivalent. Not infinity, but still pretty darn good!